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On 11/22/03, Zach Selland wrote:
>Ok, here is something that I'm not getting in the whole "email
>composition" argument. And I'm not meaning to criticize anything, I'm
>just seeking clarification. Are you manually entering line-feeds in your
>paragraphs?
Absolutely. To do otherwise either relies on the program to break the
line as you type, or for you to set the window width at exactly the
point at which it will be broken when it gets sent.
The first would be OK if that's all that can be done (but of course, that's
just not true). But the second is just plain silly to expect the user to
do that.
And I've never minded typing in my own RETURN. In fact, that's exactly
how I need it to be. I do know how to type, and to format a proper letter.
And since we've had the ability to have our mail ("e" as-well-as "snail")
be presentable in more of a letter fashion (as proven by Outlook, Netscape,
Eudora, Calypso, etc., etc., etc.,), to cling to some antiquated
suggestion is
ridiculous (again, as demonstrated by dozens of other email clients).
>For me, when I'm composing an email, PM simply breaks the
>lines according the current window width. The only time that I enter
>line-feeds (or carriage returns, or just plain returns, whatever you want
>to call them) is when I want to actually separate paragraphs visually. As
>far as I can tell, the program doesn't insert any hard wraps until the
>message is actually sent out.
>
>If you really need a real-time visual indication of how the email will
>eventually be wrapped, you could set your window width the the
>appropriate size.
>
>Anyway, if I'm totally missing any and all points here, my apologies :-)
>
>Cheers,
>Zach
You're not missing anything Zach. You're right on point.
The thing that has me baffled is that instead of people seeing that what I'm
talking about is the freedom for everyone to write their mail as they see
fit,
whether they want to stick to a particular standard or would like to have
their documents appear more "letter-like", it has already been decided by
the preponderance of the industry that it can, and should be their choice.
Instead, the response I get is the villagers trying to beat me into
submission
to accept and conform to some old ideal that hasn't been ideal for more than
10 years.
Think about that in computer terms. TEN years. In computer terms that's
leeches and blood-lettings in a world that burns heretics for suggesting that
the Earth might actually be round!!!!
:-)
Have fun,
ht
